WHO Study Finds Major Health Gaps Across Populations
The World Health Organization's largest-ever study measures inequality in noncommunicable diseases and their risk factors worldwide.
Updated on Nov. 2, 2026 in Diseases — General
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The World Health Organization released its largest-ever study measuring inequality in noncommunicable diseases and their risk factors. Noncommunicable diseases account for three-quarters of deaths worldwide.
Why it matters
The findings show that socio-economic status shapes health at every stage, from exposure to risk factors through diagnosis, treatment, and disease management. The study points to disparities that policymakers must address to reduce preventable deaths.
The study covers cancer, cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes, which together represent eight of the top 10 causes of death, and draws on 10 years of national data from 2013 to 2022. The study does not detail disease-specific causal pathways for each population group.
The players
World Health Organization (WHO)
The United Nations agency responsible for international public health, which conducted the study and urges governments to raise health taxes and tailor insurance schemes for underserved communities.
The details
The study examined tobacco use, alcohol consumption, obesity, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, and air pollution as risk factors across age, gender, economic status, education, place of residence, disability status, employment, and migration status. In low- and middle-income countries, less educated populations have higher rates of hypertension and diabetes, while cervical cancer screening remains very low among the poorest and least-educated women.
Timeline
- Data collected between 2013 and 2022 was used in the study.
- The WHO study was published on November 2, 2026.
Health Landscape
This study extends WHO's noncommunicable disease monitoring by moving beyond national averages to measure inequality across education, income, rural residence and other population groups. It follows the framing of the WHO's existing global NCD targets, which call for reducing premature deaths from these diseases.
People with less education or living in rural areas may face more limited access to hypertension diagnosis and cancer screening. Men with hypertension are diagnosed and treated less frequently than women, which may affect how routinely people are checked for high blood pressure.
The takeaway
Monitoring health by income, education and location can reveal gaps that national averages hide. Regular blood pressure checks and recommended cancer screenings are steps individuals can take regardless of where they live.
Further reading
For more on the chronic conditions covered in this report, see Diseases — General.
Source note: This article includes information reported by NST Online.
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